Enlargement of the Arab League
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The Arab League was established in 1945 with 7 Founding states, all 7 states have major influence in the Arab World, today the League has 22 members. The League witnessed 11 enlargements, with the largest in 1971 with four members of the Gulf states joining the League.
Future enlargements are not clear now, with only three Arabic Speaking Countries remaining out of the League. Of these, only Eritrea is an observer. Other possible members are Chad and Western Sahara.
[edit] History of the enlargements
- 1942 - The United Kingdom promotes the idea of the Arab League to win its battle against Nazi Germany in the Middle East.
- 1945 — Leaders of seven states in the Middle East sign the Alexandria Protocol, thus establishing the first Organization with a Pan-Arabic ideology in the 20th century. The founding members were Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan (entering under the name of Transjordan), and Yemen.
- 1953 (first enlargement) — Libya joins the Arab League after two years of independence.
- 1956 (second enlargement) — Sudan joins the League, two weeks after its independence from the UK and Egypt.
- 1 October 1958 (third enlargement) - Morocco and Tunisia join the League, two years after independence.
- 1961 (fourth enlargement) - Kuwait joins the League after 31 days of independence, and becomes the first Asian state to join the League after the founding nations.
- 16 August 1962 (fifth enlargement) - Algeria accedes to the League, less than a year after its independence.
- 1971 (sixth enlargement) - The largest enlargement with four Arab members joining the League, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain.
- 1973 (seventh enlargement) - Mauritania joins the League after thirteen years of independence.
- 1974 (eighth enlargement)- Somalia joins the League after fourteen years of independence.
- 1976 (ninth enlargement) - The Palestine Liberation Organization joins the League.
- 1977 (tenth enlargement) - Djibouti joins the Arab League two months before its independence from France that same year.
- 1993 (eleventh enlargement) - The Comoros accede to the League.
- January 2003 - Eritrea joins the League as an observer.
- September 2006 - Venezuela joins the League as an observer.
- April 2007 - India joins the League as an observer.
